This project aims at an understanding of regional impacts of global climate change on extreme sea level heights in the North Sea. Based on model results of high-resolution climate projections for the 21st century, both driving mechanisms and leading variability modes of sea level extremes at the continental North Sea coast shall be identified, including an in-depth analysis of potential future changes in the occurrence and dynamics of corresponding weather conditions. Particular focus will be laid on the investigation of the interplay of external and internal storm surges, tides and hydro-meteorological events, which are consistently simulated by a regionally coupled atmosphere-ocean climate system model.
In principle, an ensemble of 30 members has been produced with the global climate model system MPI-ESM-LR for the historical (1950-2005) and RCP8.5 periods (2006-2099), which were subsequently directly regionalized with the regionally coupled MPIOM-REMO climate model system focusing the North Sea.
ECCES is funded by the BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) under grant number 01LP1901B. Moritz Mathis was funded by Germany's Excellence Strategy EXC 2037 CLICCS - Climate, Climatic Change, and Society with project No 390683824. Furthermore, we would like to thank the DKRZ (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum, German Climate Computing Center) and their great support. Their computational resources were made available through funding support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).